When I arrived at Entrepix in Tempe in late January, there was a slight delay before starting my meeting with Tim Tobin and some of his management team.
Two large cakes, one white and one chocolate, were getting carved up in the lunchroom for employees celebrating their birthdays, a company tradition, I was told. Although sorely tempted by the sight of such sweet-tooth-resonating goodness, I passed on taking a piece as part of my continuing efforts to shed a few pounds. But I did add my voice to the harmonies of the obligatory rendering of the "Happy Birthday" song.
What does all this have to do with Entrepix's latest efforts to strengthen its place as a CMP and surface conditioning "go-to guy" in the semiconductor/micro/nano process module outsourcing/development and equipment services supply chain? Not much, except that the firm seems to be experiencing no trouble having its cake and eating it too as well as tunefully singing the mulitpart harmonies of its business plan.
I spoke with Tim, president/CEO, Bob Tucker, VP and GM, and the newest member of the company's leadership squad, Jim Mello, recently of SEZ America and now Entrepix's VP of business development. Noting agreements with SEZ, Rudolph Technologies, Lam, and Novellus over the past several months, a recent deal to acquire the assets from one of its "CMP eco-partners," Ascentec Process Equipment, and a major expansion of its facilities and cleanroom space, Tim and his team were bullish about the prospects of Entrepix managed-growth strategy.
"We see tremendous opportunities with our recent deals, but we don't want to get ahead of ourselves," Bob said. One part of Entrepix's plan moving forward was finding more room for its operations, which has been accomplished with the procurement of additional space adjacent to the existing facility.
Tim sighed that he had just signed the lease for 6000 square feet of additional space, including 5000 square feet of cleanroom facilities (a 400% increase), which will allow the company to create a demo and foundry home for the incoming SEZ tools as well as its OnTrak post-CMP tool refurbishment efforts, and offer a showroom of various CMP systems. The bossman explained that the showroom "will be good for customers new to CMP... because it will provide an unbiased presentation" of the types of tools out there and also demonstrate that Entrepix supports all the platforms. Although all I saw was alot of open cleanroom space when we peeked inside, the tools are being delivered and the company expects the new facilities to be ready in March.
In addition to the SEZ tools coming in (which will be able to handle anything from 75-mm to 300-mm wafers), the company has expanded its metrology equipment set with a KLA-Tencor SP1 defect inspection system and an FSM wafer thickness measurement tool. In a similar vein, the deal signed with Rudolph last year gives Entrepix the "exclusive license to manufacture, sell, service, and support" the metrology company's AutoEL thin-film ellipsometers," a system with an installed base of thousands around the world. Tim sees great "growth potential" for his company's relationship with Rudolph.
Entrepix's cleanroom space will soon be much larger.
The Ascentec acquisition will bring in the spare-parts piece of the CMP refurb business, something that previously wasn't part of Entrepix's portfolio, as well as adding lapping capabilities and another six to eight employees, according to the company execs.
The deal---as well as other moves---tie into the company's strategy of being "really good at CMP" and looking at "the vertical within CMP as well as complementary spaces around CMP," Tim explained, "where we can add value to the customers across the board," whether it's in tooling, process, or production capabilities. The Entrepix customer-benefit focus, its mantra if you will, remains how the company can help "accelerate time to revenue and capture market...improve operational focus...and reduce cost and risk."
Jim laid out other areas where the company can now help its customers pick and choose a wider range of complimentary processes. The availability of the SEZ spin processing and surface conditioning will "enable many different scenarios," in terms of offering a variety of fluid dynamics conditions, selectivity choices, and the like. An example would be combining specially formulated chemistries based on their selectivity for use with very thin wafers or substrates, running them through the SEZ tools, and then hitting them with a final polish.
Certain MEMS and photovoltaic customers that wanted to use spin processes can now do so in the Entrepix foundry, according to Jim. The company can help "different industries in their technology development," allowing a wide range of substrate shapes and sizes to be run through the facility. "We're picking up everything that's left behind": they even polished flexible polyimide for one customer.
Bob said the proportion of new accounts from nonsemiconductor or new semi applications is high, a good chunk of which are using the company's foundry services. In addition to dozens of customers from the MEMS, bio, nano, and other sectors, Entrepix certainly has seen and exploited some of the market potential of all those <300-mm fabs and tools that need help with upgrading, maintaining, or outsourcing their CMP and surface treatment capabilities, refurbishing or acquiring used equipment, and developing new processes or products. After all, he pointed out, about 90% of the production fabs in the world are still 200 mm or smaller. They see an emerging bifurcation in the industry "between the leading edge and everyone else.... which will include some 300-mm one day."
Entrepix's model is "cross-cooperational," according to Tim, with customers as suppliers and vice versa. For example, consumables manufacturers do their benchmarking work at the facility, developing data sets to help them sell their products to customers. Hardware guys work there too, so they can go to the IDMs and meet their requirements for those evergreen "trees of data."
One key question for Entrepix is, what's next? With proper sales and support, Tim believes the international---and photovoltaics---markets provide "fantastic opportunities." In fact, he told me that company COO Steve Horowitz was meeting with overseas customers, including some solar ones, when I was visiting.
As Entrepix continues to carefully execute on its gameplan, the big test will come if its unofficial slogan of "no fab left behind" can be rolled out successfully into the PV and global arenas. Given Tim and his team's success to date, I wouldn't bet against them---not for all the birthday cake in the world.
|
Blogs 
